Song Joong-Ki in A Werewolf Boy, a 2012 South Korean movie

There’s something wrong about this movie.

A stinking-to-heaven animal-like human is taken as part of the family in the shortest time imaginable.

The family consists of a middle-aged, pretty, smart, bubbly, kind, warm, loving, simple, responsible, very busy widow, a pretty teen-aged daughter, and just as pretty elementary-school younger daughter.

The animal-like human transforms, after a thorough wash, into a tall and handsome young man about the age of the older daughter. He fell asleep sitting as the mother was scrubbing his back, suds and all, in the spacious bathroom. They have become mother and son after just hours of being acquainted.

He later is named Cheol-su by mom, something she liked doing since she had regretted that she had not borne a son to her husband, who wanted one so much.

Cheol-su wolfs down, literally, food at the dinner table. He lived with wolves, presumably, after all. Despite so, he is always expected to eat with everyone, as family should. And, as is expected, other members of the family adjust to him. They calmly guard over their bowls and plates against him, thereby everyone gets to eat, too.

Cheol-su is very smart. He cannot produce the word-sounds but he understands whatever is told him. This way he is just like a deaf-mute member of the family, very sensitive to facial expressions and body language. Thus, 98% of the time we have a werewolf boy who is docile, clean, sweet, nice to be around, goes along and plays with the kids, listens and looks at everything, absorbing, learning.

We have, what is, a very handsome and smart asexual young man. After learning from Suni, the older daughter, not to wolf down food, we have a virile man with whom no threat stemming from any passion whatsoever can be associated with — he will not rape, nor assault, nor even verbally abuse any-one around him, not his family, not his neighbors, not the kids, not the animals, not even the plants.

This is not a movie about a werewolf. This is a movie about how love can be so comfy and warm and giving between people who have just come to know each other. Among strangers. Among neighbors. In the family. In a small remote village with wide open spaces. This movie just bubbles over with natural warmth and generous welcoming. True loving. Only one nasty presence is here, and he is so misplaced that he’s almost like a caricature. He, however, represents what to many of us the real world is. Violent. Unreasonable. Selfish. Egoistic. Arrogant.

This movie to me is so painful and so painfully beautiful that I feel I shouldn’t talk much about it lest I do it a disservice. Besides, I don’t quite know where to start talking about it. The science involved here is hazy, but with genetic engineering it could be possible. This aspect of the story did not receive much attention anyway. What’s concrete is that Cheol-su is there, breathing, living, loving. He just loves and loves like an ever-flowing stream, clear and calm, and that’s all that matters.

I hate the way time, and everyone, forgot Cheol-su. I hate the way he was deprived of so many things that we all have: circle of friends, company, a family relationship that’s always beside you. What’s even more poignant for me is that Cheol-su has no perception of having been deprived. He is like a plant, a full-grown tree, stationed in a tiny spot on earth and content with the rain and the sunshine that come his way. He thrives all by himself. He keeps his love and learns of things associated with this love: he teaches himself to read, write, and speak. Just that. He has no ambitions beyond that.

I hate the way a story caged a Cheol-su inside a story. But I really have no idea, as of now, what I could do for Cheol-su. If there’s something I can do for him at all then I would really do it. Right now. I really hate it that he’s there stuck playing with no-one but not seeing his loneliness. I hate it that I can see him like that, but he himself doesn’t have any idea of what it’s like to be able to see him like that, to know about him, knowing that he doesn’t perceive the pain of having been left alone.

I really wish that Cheol-su has not existed at all. However, if he did not, I wouldn’t have known that love can be like this.

I will never ever forget this movie. There are only about two other like it for me: Lost in the Desert (1969/1970), and The Fall (2006).

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